


No Promise Sweeter

by Magpiie



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-it fic, descriptions of violence from the show
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22376089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpiie/pseuds/Magpiie
Summary: Treasure of the Sun, but maybe this time Laura doesn't take such a long damn time.
Relationships: Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney
Comments: 15
Kudos: 53





	1. Finish What You Started

**Author's Note:**

> "No promise sweeter than a blood pact  
> Nothing harder to go through than a vanishing act  
> No morning colder than the first frost  
> No friends closer than the ones we've lost"  
> \- Rain in Soho, The Mountain Goats

"Fuck me?"  
"Fuck you," Shadow confirmed, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. A good man, considering the circumstances, Sweeney thought. Level-headed and merciful. If he wasn't beyond caring, he might have felt guilty that Shadow got stuck in the middle of all this. But what good would that have done? That guilt would just pile on top of all the other guilt, like one more grain of sand on a beach.  
"Fuck me," he conceded, with a defeated nod. That beach of bad decisions stretched out ahead of him, and he wished Shadow would just hit him again. As good a man as Shadow might have been, he was also predictable. The right words to rekindle his anger rolled through Sweeney's head and turned his stomach.

The memory of the Coq Noir was a spiky and vicious thing that he had kept his attention far away from, up to now. Putting words to it meant facing it, facing her and her furious rejection, and fuck, that really made him want to get hit again. He lifted his chin and forced the words out before he could stop himself. "I fucked her. In New Orleans."

He was already pretty punch-drunk (and, well, regular drunk), so the next crack of a fist against his skull didn't register quite right. But then he was aware that he had crumpled closer to the floor, and that the ringing in his ears had turned to a thunderous scream. Her voice drifted through his mind unbidden ("what the fuck?" it asked, flatly unimpressed), and he winced. _I'm sorry_ , he thought in reply. _I didn't mean to make it seem so ugly._

The realisation that those could be his final words made him suck the blood out from between his teeth and blink Shadow back into focus. He'd been robbed of his family, his home, his power, his own damned sanity. At least he could give up his life when he chose, without letting that be taken from him too.

But Shadow wasn't fighting anymore. He wasn't even looking at him. His eyes were fixed on the doorway, and the implication of that made Sweeney's stomach drop. That hadn't just been a voice in his head, a fractured memory splintering through.  
 _No_ , he thought, swivelling his head to see her stood there at the threshold, arms folded in front of her, looking powerful and fragile and beautiful and fucking terrible. _You shouldn't be here._  
"Defending my honour?" she continued wryly. Shadow sighed, shrugged. "I don't think you owe me that anymore."  
"What are you doing here?" he asked, seeming equally perturbed by this turn of events. Her lips pursed, and her shoulders hunched higher, and her eyes rolled to settle on Sweeney. Confusion thudded in the back of his head, making him squint.  
"What?"  
"There have been… developments." Her gaze slid away from him in a way he could read all too easily: it meant she was hiding something, and she was afraid he might see right through her. "Regarding our agreement."

"Go ahead, Sweeney," a voice rumbled behind him. He shot Wednesday a dark stare over one shoulder, but the old Viking bastard just gazed back with cool disdain. "Finish what you started." The pounding in his head sounded like the drums of war, and his hands twitched with the instinct to destroy, to take up arms against the beast who'd set him on this dark path. And so what if he died in the endeavor? It was a good end, and time for it. His life was disposable.

But then what? What chance would Laura have, alone in this pit of self-serving monsters? Even if she did walk out of Cairo with her life - or what was left of it - she had even fewer people to turn to than he did. His anger about New Orleans flared, then dissipated. He'd let her twist that knife in his heart a hundred times before he let her die alone.

With a hollow laugh at the realisation, he turned back to Shadow. The other man's eyes were dark and careful. Sweeney spat a mouthful of blood at his feet.  
"Watch who's pulling your strings, friend."

And then he crossed the room, and left the house of death with her. His life was disposable - but hers wasn't. Time to finish what he started.

As they followed the path out, back to the road, her attention caught on the empty garden and lingered there a couple of moments.  
"The women are gone," she observed distantly, and he followed her gaze with surprise. She was right. The garden was dark, and empty. He cast a nervous glance around, but there wasn't a trace of them. The night's quiet was only broken by the soft chirp of insects and the distant mumbling of traffic. "About time," she continued, still walking ahead of him. "The noise was fucking unbearable. Not to sound unsympathetic but it was ridiculous, right?" She waited for him to reply. He didn't. "I mean, you heard them, didn't you?"  
"Aye," he answered dryly. "I heard them."

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the road and when they stepped out onto the main sidewalk, finally off the property and out of view of the place, she turned suddenly on her heel and slammed her hands down on his chest. There was only a fraction of her full force behind it, but the shock of it made him stagger back regardless.  
"Hey-!"  
"Asshole!" She glowered up at him, her clouded eyes sharp with anger and her hands balled in fists at her side. He blinked down at her, baffled.  
"What? I haven't even said two words-"  
"What were you thinking?! Were you just gonna let yourself fucking die in there?"  
"I was-" He furrowed his brow. He hadn't expected to have to defend his decisions from her. "I-"  
"And don't give me some bullshit! I spoke to Salim. He was worried about you. From the way he described it, you've been acting like a fucking idiot since you got there." Worried about him? How nice. She must have noticed the surprise on his face, because she threw her hands up in frustration.

"So what?" he said eventually. She dropped her hands.  
"So what? So what about the rest of us? I'm still dead, if you didn't notice."  
"I did notice. And why's that?" Some of the energy drained out of her. The runaway train of her fury was being derailed.  
"What do you mean, why's that?"  
"I mean, why didn't you take the Baron's help?" She flinched, and he felt a cold little thrill of victory. It had just been a hunch, but she had as good as confirmed it.  
"What?" She was still trying to sound angry but the fire behind her voice was quickly fading.  
"Yeah, I figured you lied. They're tricky fuckers, but we go way back. They would have helped you." Her hard gaze turned soft, and she looked away. His shoulders slumped. It wasn't as easy as he thought, seeing past her bluster and bravado to the coward inside, but the honesty felt like finally setting down a heavy weight. The ache felt good. He continued, tone coolly matter-of-fact. "But you got pissed off, 'cause you thought you could handle the truth and it turned out you couldn't. Like I said. Tricky fuckers. So, if he helped you, what's the problem?"

"It isn't finished," she said, voice flaky. Before he could question her further, she held out a bottle - and he took it, lifting it to inspect it in the dull glow of a streetlight.  
"Huh. And you need something from me? Bet you regretted telling me to fuck off after you realised that." He handed the bottle back. "How'd you know I was in Cairo?"  
"I didn't."  
"Oh." A puzzle piece clicked into place in his mind, and the picture clarified. "Oh. But you knew Shadow was."  
"I thought… I don't know what I thought. I wasn't ready to face the truth." When she turned back to him, she was wearing an expression he'd never seen before. It was open and raw in a way that was almost painful to look at, in a way that made him want to bundle her up in his arms just to hold her together.  
"Oh?" He cleared his throat, his feigned nonchalance unconvincing even to himself. "And what truth is that?" Her lip wavered - as if she might cry, were that an option available to her - and then she took a deep breath, bracing herself.  
"I need your blood."


	2. All Set / Not Quite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two idiots can't use their words.

The sun rose on a morning he hadn't planned to see. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth spread over his bare forearms and open palms, and seep into the bruises and cuts and lines of his face, and set freckles across the bridge of his nose. They had stopped in the parking lot of a sun-bleached old mall, the kind where only every other unit is occupied and the food court contains a single ancient Burger King - one that has been forgotten so long by its corporate overlords that it's on the brink of shedding its monarchy, and becoming its own independent Burger State. 

Laura scoured this liminal wasteland of defunct capitalism for things a living human would need: toothpaste, a hairbrush, clothes that didn't smell like a grave. Sweeney waited, leaning against their stolen car, meditative like a cat in the morning sun. Cairo was beginning to feel like a distant nightmare. This situation didn't entirely feel real either. He pondered it as she returned and slung a couple of bags onto the back seat. His life had become one of impermanence, of finally steadying yourself only to have the ground slide out from under you. He was waiting to wake up from this dream too. 

"All set," he commented, as she hopped up to sit on the hood next to him. The potion was done. He had tried to question her about it further, but she'd given him nothing but defensive silence and sarcasm. Maybe it didn't matter. They didn't really need to say the missing words to know what they were. As she drove them through til morning, he'd wordlessly pressed a small knife to his inner arm and added his blood to the mixture.

"Not quite," she replied.  
"Not quite? Potion's done, isn't it?"  
"Yeah. But I don't know what's gonna happen. I wanna be prepared."  
"Oh yeah, you always were such a girl scout." He smirked lopsidedly at her and she frowned and cocked her chin up.  
"And how do you know I wasn't a girl scout?"  
"Were you?" She scoffed and turned away.  
"Don't worry, we'll be done here soon. I'm gonna pick up some food and get a motel room, and then I'll do it." Sometimes he could just feel her zoning out, like she had said too much and had to shut down for a while, lest everything just come spilling out at once. The truth was a beast she kept on a very short rein, always yanking it back before you could look him in the eye. Her expression hardened as she checked each uncontrolled emotion. "You'll get your coin back."

They passed plenty of drive-thrus and gas stations, and at each one she clicked her tongue and shook her head. The first meal of her new life, she explained, had to be something special. He tried to argue that after several months of a belly full of nothing but vodka and rot she'd probably be hungry enough to eat just about anything, but she ignored him. Finally she stopped to buy a large pizza, with seafood and olives. He asked her what made this pizzeria different from the last three they had passed. She avoided making eye contact.

As night descended and they crossed the parking lot to the room she had rented for the night, he fancied he could hear a funeral dirge. Her shoulders sagged and her eyes swept listlessly over the ground. She was a woman marching into a new life, but she dragged her feet like she was approaching the executioner's block. 

They entered the room in silence and then he watched her set her toiletries on the bathroom sink, still wrapped in their plastic, and spread her new clothes out carefully on the bed. And then she stood with her back to him and stared at it all for a long time, and then asked coolly over her shoulder,  
"What's going to happen?"

Sweeney cleared his throat, shrugged.  
"Lots of ways it could happen. Probably won't be…" He glanced around the little room, like he might find the right word somewhere. "Nice. But then you'll be alive, so does it matter?"  
"No, I mean…" Her voice dropped and she made a noise of exasperation, but he couldn't be sure which of them it was really directed at. There was a tension back in her. She was fighting the other Laura, the one inside, the one she didn't want anyone to know about. The one who was real, and scared. "After?"

After?  
"I don't know," he answered carefully.  
"I needed the blood of someone who loved me," she said matter-of-factly, as if he had asked. Her hands fidgeted by her sides.  
"Yeah. Yeah, I figured." She turned to face him - not to face him, exactly, with her arms all folded up in front of her and her eyes burning holes in the ratty carpet - and even with her twitching like a rat in a trap he felt at great peace. He loved her, and he didn't want to love her, but that was the truth of it. And she knew, and it hurt the way he'd forgotten love could hurt you. He opened his mouth and finally, with all the poise of a king and the wit of a poet and the gut-wrenching terror of a coward in love blurted out, "You?"


	3. Cigarettes and Vomit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It only took almost three months of lockdown for me to update this fic. 😅
> 
> I really struggled with this chapter - possibly because I've written a million resurrection fics for this ships and it's hard to be original now - but I do have some stuff I'm excited to do in the next chapter, so please bear with me.

I love being alone, Laura used to tell people with some degree of proud self-sufficiency. That wasn't entirely true. She was equally as happy being totally alone as she was in a bustling party or in the arms of a lover - which was to say, not very happy at all. There had always been a pit in her chest where a heart should have been. It had been the siren call echo of all its nothingness that lured her into that goddamn hot tub.

Some people were just born empty.

She had cycled through drinks and hairstyles and sexual partners trying to drown out the emptiness, and sometimes it worked for a while, but the loneliness was always there until it became the everyday noise in the back of her head.

Somehow, the absence of loneliness became harder to bear than the loneliness itself. He made her feel… noticed. But not on terms that she would ever allow: she let Shadow love Laura, the Quirky Wife and she let Robbie love Laura, the Pitiful Whore. To let someone just see Laura, in all her shame and anger and cowardice, hurt like salt in a raw wound. To love that dark and desperate mess was adding insult to injury.

She had, after all that time, not felt alone anymore. And then she had bolted from that feeling, and the loneliness had come crashing back down around her.

"That's fine," he muttered, after an uncomfortably long silence. "You don't have to say-"  
"Please don't leave me," she choked out, and his wary gaze slid back to her. It wasn't 'I love you'. It was so much worse.   
"What?"  
"When I'm alive again, and you get your coin back. Promise you won't leave."  
"I wasn't the one who ran out before."  
"Don't argue with me."  
"Why not? That's what we do." She frowned, words catching in her throat. He had a point. The fact that he was right riled her, the same as it always did.  
"Fine, argue with me! Tell me how selfish I am, tell me what an awful fucking whore I am, say whatever you want-"  
"-I never said-"  
"-You don't have to say it, I fucking know what-"  
"-If you know so much, why the fuck did you leave me in New Orleans?" 

Both of their voices had risen somehow to shouting - the same way everything escalated between them, like napalm on a campfire. Finally she shook her head and yelled,  
"Just fucking promise me, okay?! Promise me you won't leave!"   
"Alright! Alright," he spat, mouth twisting in frustration. He turned and paced across the little room, then back again, and sighed tensely. "Fine. I promise. Stop punishing me for loving you, you cun-"

She launched herself at him and he braced himself, but it wasn't her fist that shut him up. It was her lips on his, dry and needy. He shuddered as her cold fingers threaded through his hair and she paused when he didn't reciprocate right away, wondering if she had miscalculated - but then he was wrapping his arms tight around her skinny hips and pulling her closer, trying desperately to kiss some warmth into her. She could barely feel his skin on hers, his hands on her hips, his beard on her cheek - and she knew how clumsy and dead she must feel to him. He broke the kiss first but didn't pull away.  
"Cigarettes and vomit?" she asked, and he grimaced.  
"Take the potion before you fuckin' liquefy." 

He didn't have to tell her twice - she turned and crossed the room as quickly as her decaying nerve endings would allow, fumbled briefly in the bags and retrieved the little bottle, struggled with the fastener, threw it back like a shot of tequila.  
"Careful," he warned, his voice weird and distant. It hit her like a train. She staggered backwards to sit on the bed and instantly he was next to her, laying her down while the room spun, kneeling above to stare at her with a confused mix of panic and impatience and concern.

Human things were starting to return to her. Tears bubbled at the corners of her burning eyes, and patches of skin were beginning to sting with cold. When she lifted a hand to grab at the collar of his jacket she noticed a tiny buzz of sensation, and moved to press her palm against his neck instead. It felt warm beneath her touch and the warmth felt impossibly good. Feeling anything would have felt like a miracle, but feeling the heat of his skin, the little shivers under her fingertips, the flex and stretch of living muscle under flesh? The tears flowed hot and trembling down her cheeks. He frowned.  
"Are you crying-"  
  
Her lips swallowed his words once more, but this time she wasn't cold. She didn't taste like cigarettes and vomit. She tasted like spice and the sea, like a hot whiskey, and he melted into her touch as she pulled him crushingly close. He pretended not to notice her practically sobbing, or digging broken nails into the back of his neck. None of that mattered. He was lost in the relief of knowing that she was alive. 

This kiss wasn't how she imagined it, and by God had she imagined it plenty. It started with fleeting curiosity and, since New Orleans, had grown to an obsession. How would he react, if she kissed him in real life? Get angry? Laugh at her? Take the chance on some quick and dirty fling? She replayed that dim memory of the Coq Noir where he had stared up at her, enraptured, and dreamed that it could be like that.

And it did feel like that, a little. Enough. It was perfect. 

And then a shuddering cough tore through her, and she turned her head away. She pressed a hand to her chest, flinching at the burning sensation, and shot him a look of panic. His look of mild concern didn't make her feel any better.

She had seen Dummy throw up before, convulsing like he was possessed before ruining her carpet. This felt a little like that. With a choking, spluttering sound, she spat his coin onto the stained duvet cover.

"Lovely," he deadpanned, and she paused wiping the spit from her lips to glare up at him.  
"Better than picking it out of my rotting organs, right?" He picked it up gingerly and wiped it on his shirt with a grimace, then let it vanish back into the hoard. A flicker of relief passed his face.  
"S'pose so." He glanced her over with an easy smile, and she fought the urge to smile back at him. A part of her wanted to go back to kissing him, but since the moment had been broken, her pride was back. The game between them had resumed. The rules weren't exactly clear, but there was one goal: appear to want the other less than they wanted you. He waited a few seconds to see which moved she'd play, before standing and stretching nonchalantly. "So, now what?"  
"Are you serious?" She stood up. "That's all you can say, now what? I was dead for so long I lost count of the days, and now I can finally experience all life has to offer again." Her hands landed heavily on his shoulders, and she grinned up at him. "Let's go out, and get fucking wasted."


End file.
